Trade dress is the characteristics of the visual appearance of a product or its packaging that signify the source of the product to consumers. Trade dress is a form of intellectual property.
A trademark is a word, phrase, or logo that identifies the source of goods or services. Trademark law protects a business' commercial identity or brand by discouraging other businesses from adopting a name or logo that is "confusingly similar" to an existing trademark. The goal is to allow consumers to easily identify the producers of goods and services and avoid confusion.
Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003), was a copyright and trademark case of the Supreme Court of the United States involving the applicability of the Lanham Act to a work in the public domain.
A non-conventional trademark, also known as a nontraditional trademark, is any new type of trademark which does not belong to a pre-existing, conventional category of trade mark, and which is often difficult to register, but which may nevertheless fulfill the essential trademark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services.
TrafFix Devices, Inc. v. Marketing Displays, Inc., 532 U.S. 23 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court decision in the area of trademark law, holding that a functional design could not be trademarked, and that a patented design was presumed to be functional.
A colour trade mark is a non-conventional trade mark where at least one colour is used to perform the trade mark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services.
Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), is a United States Supreme Court case relieving a media defendant of liability for broadcasting a taped conversation of a labor official talking to other union people about a teachers' strike.
In United States trademark law, the functionality doctrine prevents manufacturers from protecting specific features of a product by means of trademark law. There are two branches of the functionality doctrine: utilitarian functionality and aesthetic functionality. The rationale behind functionality doctrine is that product markets would not be truly competitive if newcomers could not make a product with a feature that consumers demand. Utilitarian functionality provides grounds to deny federal trademark protection to product features which do something useful. Patent law, not trademark, protects useful processes, machines, and material inventions. Patented designs are presumed to be functional until proven otherwise. Aesthetic functionality provides grounds to deny trademark protection to design features which are included to make the product more aesthetically appealing and commercially desirable. Aesthetic features are within the purview of copyright law, which provides protection to creative and original works of authorship.
College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board, 527 U.S. 666 (1999), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States relating to the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 305 U.S. 111 (1938), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the Kellogg Company was not violating any trademark or unfair competition laws when it manufactured its own Shredded Wheat breakfast cereal, which had originally been invented by the National Biscuit Company. Kellogg's version of the product was of an essentially identical shape, and was also marketed as "Shredded Wheat"; but Nabisco's patents had expired, and its trademark application for the term "Shredded Wheat" had been turned down as a descriptive, non-trademarkable term.
Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510, is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied American intellectual property law to the reverse engineering of computer software. Stemming from the publishing of several Sega Genesis games by video game publisher Accolade, which had disassembled Genesis software in order to publish games without being licensed by Sega, the case involved several overlapping issues, including the scope of copyright, permissible uses for trademarks, and the scope of the fair use doctrine for computer code.
Inwood Laboratories Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc., 456 U.S. 844 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court case, in which the Court confirmed the application of and set out a test for contributory trademark liability under § 32 of the Lanham Act.
United States v. Alfonso D. Lopez, Jr., 514 U.S. 549 (1995), was a landmark case of the United States Supreme Court concerning the Commerce Clause. It was the first case since 1937 in which the Court held that Congress had exceeded its power to legislate under the Commerce Clause.
Rosetta Stone v. Google, 676 F.3d 144, was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that challenged the legality of Google's AdWords program. The Court overturned a grant of summary judgment for Google that had held Google AdWords was not a violation of trademark law.
Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 U.S. 763 (1992), was a United States Supreme Court case where the Court held that Two Pesos, Inc. infringed upon the trademark of Taco Cabana, Inc. by copying the design of their restaurants. Writing for a majority of the court, Justice Byron White concluded that trade dress is inherently distinctive under the Lanham Act and that plaintiffs are not required to prove secondary meaning in suits to protect their trademark. The Court upheld an award of $3.7 million in damages, and Taco Cabana ultimately acquired all of Two Pesos' assets in 1993 for $22 million.
Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court affirmed unanimously the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the provisions of the Lanham Act prohibiting registration of trademarks that may "disparage" persons, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols with the United States Patent and Trademark Office violated the First Amendment.
Iancu v. Brunetti, No. 18–302, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), is a United States Supreme Court case related to the registration of trademarks under the Lanham Act. The Court ruled 6–3, deciding that the provisions of the Lanham Act prohibiting registration of trademarks of "immoral" or "scandalous" matter is unconstitutional, as it permits the United States Patent & Trademark Office to engage in viewpoint discrimination, violating the freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment.
Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case related to trademark law under the Lanham Act. In the 9-0 decision on judgement, the Court ruled that a plaintiff in a trademark infringement lawsuit is not required to demonstrate that the defendant willfully infringed on their trademark to claim lost profit damages.
Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B. V., 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the trademarkability of a generic terms appended with a top-level domain (TLD) specifier. The Court ruled that such names can be trademarked unless the existing combination of term and TLD is considered to have a generic meaning to consumers.
